


dead men tell no tales

by WeeBeastie



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dark John Silver, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, hints of Treasure Island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 18:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12893703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeeBeastie/pseuds/WeeBeastie
Summary: shiver my timbers, shiver my sails[a post-s4 au with eventual silverflinthamilton]





	1. sailor man beware

**Author's Note:**

> So these two chapters were inspired by two different Tumblr prompts, which I decided to post as one short fic. There may eventually be more to this universe, I'm not sure yet. I wrote the first fic kind of on a whim, after imagining what a Tim Curry-Luke Arnold hybrid Long John would be like. Turns out he's kind of dark and a bit angry/bitter, but also the same cheeky shit we already knew!
> 
> The POV switches between the two chapters because...it made sense at the time? I dunno guys, I'm just winging it over here.
> 
> Title, chapter titles, and lyrics in the summary borrowed from Muppet Treasure Island because obviously.
> 
> Thank you to all my Tumblr peeps, especially the two who sent the prompts that inspired this! <3

It’s been a long day for James. He’s been out of the house working at his shop all day, and now that he’s finally heading home, it’s to an empty, quiet cottage. Thomas is off traveling for his own work, and will be gone for at least another two weeks’ time. He’s relearned how to be at peace with only himself for company, but he still gets so lonely sometimes. 

He trudges up the path to the cottage and is about to open the front door when he notices it’s already ajar. He pauses, confused, and realizes he can hear faint music coming from inside. 

He pushes the door open, feeling a chill go down his spine. “Thomas?” he calls, hoping it’s just his love returned home early. Something tells him it’s not. 

The music stops. James creeps toward the kitchen of the cottage, wishing he’d thought to grab a fireplace poker or a candlestick or anything, really, to defend himself against the intruder. 

When he arrives in the doorway of the kitchen and can at last see the stranger in his house, he doesn’t recognize him at first, truly. The man sitting at the table is all rough-hewn dark clothing and a crooked, gold-capped smile, with a massive black gray-streaked beard and a milky, sightless right eye. He’s got a guitar - Thomas’s - in his lap but has ceased playing it. When he sets it aside and leverages himself up to standing, only then does James realize precisely who has broken into his home. 

“John,” he whispers. ‘Taken aback’ is a massive understatement for what he feels - he’s not sure what reality he’s been dropped into that Long John Silver should be standing in his kitchen, staring him down with his one good eye. “What the fuck are you doing here?” James snarls, a sudden tide of anger rising in him. 

Silver shifts his weight and makes his way slowly toward James, the familiar thump of his crutch far more ominous than it used to be. 

“The treasure,” he says, pausing several feet from James, wisely keeping his distance. “Where is it?”

“Skeleton Island, you know that,” James says, folding his arms resolutely over his chest. He wants Silver out of his house, now, but some insatiably curious part of him also wants to know what Silver thinks he’s doing. Why visit him here, why now? Why visit at all? They parted on terrible terms and haven’t corresponded or seen each other a single time in the years since. 

“Where?” Silver asks, and if James isn’t mistaken his voice is rougher, angrier than it used to be. His dialect is changed, too, from what James can tell thus far. He sounds less John Silver the quartermaster and more Long John the pirate king. It makes James wonder, fleetingly, if he ever really knew him at all. 

“Why should I tell you? What will you do if I don’t, kill me?” James asks challengingly, lifting his chin to look down his nose at Silver. He can feel a muscle in his jaw jumping. 

“Don’t be daft,” Silver growls and pushes past James, going toward the liquor cabinet to- fetch himself a bottle of rum? He’s acting like he lives here; it’s infuriating. “I won’t kill you. I need you alive, I do.”

“Why?” James asks, fighting the sudden impulse to rip the bottle of rum from Silver’s hands and smash it on the floor. 

Silver slumps against the wall, rum in hand. He looks a sight. He’s filthy and bloodied, and his long hair - worn loose, as though to conceal his blind eye - is in desperate need of a wash. He takes a drink from the rum bottle, clearly at ease with making James wait for a reply. 

“Dead men tell no tales,” he says at last. “I need you to tell me where you buried the chest. If I kill you, I’ll never know. Ironic, innit? At our first meeting you kept me alive for what I knew, and now I return the favor.”

“I’m not going to tell you, so you’d best be on your way,” James says, looking away. As much as part of him is still absolutely furious with Silver for what he did, another, softer part of him is distraught to see Silver in such poor shape. “Get out, John. Go now, before Thomas gets home and your very presence here causes an unnecessary scene.”

“He’s not coming home tonight, I know he’s gone traveling,” Silver says dismissively. “You look surprised, Captain. What? Did you think I came here today on accident, hey? You underestimate me. No, I shan’t be leaving. Not until you tell me what I needs to know.”

“I could just kill you and save myself the trouble,” James says darkly, threateningly. 

“Aye, you could. But y’ won’t. You could have done on the island, or on the boat, or even on the ride to Savannah. But you didn’t, because you can’t,” Silver says smugly, and James hates how right he is. “You can’t kill me.”

“You need to get out of my house,” James tries again, growling through clenched teeth, even as he’s aware it’s a losing battle he’s fighting. “Now.”

“I’ll be here as long as it takes,” Silver says calmly, unflinching. 

So begins one of the strangest periods of James’s life, and he’s endured quite a few strange things in his time. Silver sleeps on a couch in the parlor, he’s generally foul-tempered with a mouth to match, and he’s at once familiar and utterly foreign to James. If Silver asked, he’d freely admit that he’s considering just smothering him in his sleep to be done with this whole farce. He isn’t sure why he can’t bring himself to just tell Silver what he wants to know so he’ll leave - spite, perhaps. 

On the evening of the third day, James begins to insist that Silver take a bath, at least, if he’s going to stay. 

“You stink,” he says flatly. “You’ve clearly been at sea for far too long. I won’t have you ruining my furniture with your soiled clothes and filthy hair.”

“Fine. Draw me a bath, then,” Silver says, picking at his teeth with a knife. He glances at James with his one functional eye, as though testing him to see his reaction. 

“Why can’t you do it?” James asks, but to his chagrin he’s already pushing his chair away from the table and standing before he can stop himself. 

“Because I’m lacking a leg _and_ an eye these days, Jim, and more to the point I just don’t want to,” Silver says, sticking the knife point-first into the tabletop. “You may not be, but the rest of the world, they’re feared of old Long John. I’m a king now. The king you and your accursed crew made me become.”

“Stop talking like that, you sound ridiculous. And don’t fucking call me Jim,” James snipes, but he goes to draw Silver a bath regardless. When it’s ready, Silver starts removing his clothes as though he doesn’t care that James can see him. As James pointedly turns away, he thinks he can see a smirk on the pirate king’s face. 

On the morning of the sixth day, James finally asks the question that’s been niggling at him since Silver arrived. 

“For what purpose did you really come here?” he asks Silver as they share a mostly civil breakfast. 

“To find out where your bloody treasure is buried so I can take it for myself,” Silver says, in a tone that indicates he thinks James is losing his wits in his advancing age. 

“That’s not why,” James argues softly, fixing his gaze on Silver’s one good eye, still the clear, calm blue that he remembers, despite everything else that’s changed about Silver. “I don’t know what the reason truly is. But I don’t believe it’s just the treasure.”

Silver says nothing in reply, just looks away from James, staring down at his plate like it’s done something to gravely offend him. 

It takes until the end of the eleventh day for Silver to do something that brings his true motivations to light. James has long since retired to bed alone when he wakes from his light sleep to the sound of the door creaking slowly open. 

“What are you doing, John?” he murmurs, facing away from the door, resolutely not turning over to look at the corsair in his bedroom. 

“I don’t know,” comes a hoarse whisper that sounds so much like the John Silver that James used to know, he rolls over and sits up, almost expecting to see a nervous, uncertain young man instead of a world-weary pirate king. 

“You didn’t come here to interrogate me about the location of the treasure,” James says with a certainty in his voice that he’s starting to feel in his gut. 

“No,” Silver says, his face the picture of anguish, of internal conflict. He looks like he’s in physical pain. 

“You came here,” James says as he slowly climbs out of bed, approaching Silver like he might a wild animal, “because you missed me.”

“Yes,” Silver grits out, slumping against the doorframe, all the fight visibly gone out of him.

“I’ve missed you, too,” James whispers when he’s only a few paces away from Silver. “I didn’t want to. I fought it, I denied it, to myself and to Thomas. But it’s true, John. Damn it, I’ve missed you so much.”

“But Thomas…?” Silver asks, looking hopeful but understandably wary. 

“Already knows. I’ve told him all about you, of course,” James admits with a helpless little laugh. “He’s been the one telling me I should find you. He’s better than I deserve.”

“Impossible,” Silver scoffs, almost playfully, and then he’s moving into James’s embrace and kissing him like they’re the only two people in the world, and a part of James that he didn’t realize was absent quietly slips back into place.


	2. a five, six, seven, eight

Silver expects there will be hell to pay when Thomas gets home, and really, he feels he can’t be blamed for that assumption. He has, after all, wormed his way back into Flint’s (it’s James now, he reminds himself, _James_ ) life and into his bed during Thomas’s brief work-travel absence. Flint has assured him over and over that Thomas is far from the jealous type and in fact he’ll probably be rather pleased, if a bit surprised, to see that Silver has found Flint again and they’ve made up so admirably. 

But still, Silver can’t help feeling a creeping dread as the day of Thomas’s anticipated return draws near and, finally, arrives. 

He and Flint are sitting in the parlor together of an evening, Silver smoking his pipe and Flint rereading one of his innumerable books, when at the same time they hear the unmistakable sound of a person striding confidently up the front path to the cottage. 

“His lordship has arrived, I presume,” Silver mutters as Flint sets his book aside and hurriedly gets to his feet, rushing toward the front door. Silver pushes himself up on his crutch and follows Flint, lagging purposefully behind. He’s nervous, wary of Thomas and everything he represents. 

Flint opens the door and there he is, Thomas Hamilton, looking only slightly grayer and more weathered than he did when Silver caught a glimpse of him from a distance in Savannah. He’s clearly fared better in the intervening years than has Silver himself. Bastard. 

“Darling,” Thomas greets Flint as he steps inside, shutting the door firmly behind himself before taking Flint into his arms and giving him a proper kiss hello. Silver looks away, shuffling foot and crutch nervously. He can feel Thomas looking at him when he pulls away from Flint. “We have a visitor, I see.”

“This is John Silver,” Flint says before Silver can introduce himself.

He approaches Thomas, schooling his face into an expression of disinterest and mild contempt. “ _Long_ John Silver,” he corrects Flint, holding his right hand out to Thomas. “So, at last I meet the illustrious Lord Thomas Hamilton.”

“Please, call me Thomas,” he says, shaking Silver’s hand and giving him a smile that warms the pit of Silver’s belly, much to his irritation. He doesn’t want to like this man, not one bit. He doesn’t want to find him charming or attractive. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, John. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Aye, and I you,” Silver murmurs, taking his hand back and studying Thomas with his one good eye. Thomas may not particularly be the jealous type, but Silver is rapidly discovering that he personally might be. That’s a bit unfortunate, but not really surprising. 

“James, be a dear and put the kettle on the fire, please,” Thomas requests as he removes his coat and hangs it on a rack near the door. “Now, John, I want to hear all about how you came to be here. Spare no details, I do love a good story.”

Silver harrumphs and retreats to the armchair he’d been occupying before, picking up his pipe again as Thomas settles on the couch opposite him. The couch Silver slept on before he found his way into Flint’s bed just a few nights prior. It’s been an eventful few weeks. 

“I came here to get the location of his treasure. The stubborn cuss won’t tell me, so here I stay. I shan’t leave until I get what I need,” he says, then sticks his pipe in his mouth and stares Thomas down with the one good eye and one blind one, trying to unnerve him. He knows he looks a bit less feral than he did when first he arrived at the cottage, but he also knows how uncomfortable some people find it to look at him. Thomas, though, doesn’t so much as flinch. 

“Really? That’s the story you’re going to tell?” Flint asks, returning from the kitchen with two cups of tea for himself and Thomas and a bottle of rum tucked under his arm for Silver. “You’ve left out some rather important details,” he says as he hands Thomas his tea and Silver his drink, then takes his place on the couch next to Thomas. 

“It’s the truth, innit,” Silver murmurs, setting his pipe aside in favor of the bottle of rum. He needs it to quiet his nerves. 

“Bullshit,” Flint scoffs. “It was never anything more than at best a half-truth, and you know it.”

The aggravation in his voice makes Silver’s blood sing, and he grins in spite of himself. “I tells the story the way I sees it. I came here because of Skeleton Island. I stayed because you were too stubborn to tell me, and if perhaps I found a decent second reason to stay, well. That’s my business.”

“You never said he had such a colorful way of speaking, in all your reminiscing about him,” Thomas murmurs to Flint, his gaze still fixed on Silver in a way that makes his spine tingle. 

“He didn’t used to,” Flint murmurs back flatly, scowling at Silver. 

“I can hear you, gentlemen. I’m half-blind and half-crippled, not half-deaf. Not yet,” Silver says, then chases his words with a swig of rum. He eyes Thomas, trying to decide how best to put into words what’s rolling around in his mind. “The second, less important reason I’m here is James his-self. I...wanted him. So I found him, and I had him,” he admits, carefully not using words like ‘needed’ or ‘missed,’ though both are closer to the truth. By the look on Flint’s face, he knows Silver is lying to himself and to Thomas. 

“Ah, I don’t blame you,” Thomas says with a friendly half-smile, and doesn’t even have the decency to look at all surprised by Silver’s admission, damn him. 

As it turns out, that’s only the beginning of Thomas being more than accommodating to Silver - he’s downright gracious to him, actually, which in turn only fans the flames of Silver’s anger. He’s caught between a curious though undeniable lust for Thomas, and an instinctive dislike of him because he had James first and, more importantly, has him still. On top of that is his ever-present want for Flint, which he’s given up on ever being truly free of. It’s a rough place for him to occupy, and in the following weeks Silver finds himself doing ludicrous things like insisting upon sleeping on the couch (Thomas is more than willing to let him in their bed but he refuses, doesn’t so much as touch or kiss Flint anymore, denying himself even those small pleasures), and throwing overblown tantrums hardly befitting a pirate king whenever anything happens to ruffle his kingly feathers. No matter how minor. 

“Bloody fucking hell!” he roars one night after a dinner spent bickering with both his hosts, smashing a plate on the floor because he can and it feels good. “I’ve had it with you two!” he says, throwing himself down in his chair at the table and scrubbing his hands over his face in irritation. 

“Now, John,” Thomas says softly, rising from his chair and crossing to Silver. He rests one warm hand lightly on his shoulder. “I know it’s got to be a bit awkward for you being here, but as I’ve told you before we—”

“A bit awkward! Try bleeding miserable,” Silver snarls, deliberately looking away from Thomas but not shrugging his comforting hand off even though he wants to. “Smart as paint, you are,” he mutters acerbically. 

“Smart as paint? Honestly. Where the fuck did you learn to talk like that?” Flint asks from across the table, scowling. “You sound like how a child imagines a pirate would talk.”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be, or something to do? A hobby, perhaps?” Silver snipes back at him. 

“My hobby is making fun of you when you talk,” Flint drawls, and Silver twitches with the tamped-down impulse to lunge across the table and either stab or kiss him, he’s honestly not sure which he wants more. His control over his temper has clearly slipped in recent years, and Thomas coming home has thrown his and Flint’s dynamic into chaos in a way he’s not sure he’s equipped to deal with. Plus, he hasn’t gotten laid since Thomas’s return, and despite that being by his own choice it’s wearing on him. But he’s too damn stubborn to up and leave, so here he sits. Miserable. 

“James. Let us alone a moment,” Thomas says, and miraculously Flint leaves the kitchen with no further comment. Thomas pulls a chair close and sits down opposite Silver, studying his face with that unflinching gaze. He’s got faint smile lines around his mouth and in the outer corners of his eyes, Silver notices for the first time. They’re unfairly becoming.

“John,” Thomas begins, reaching out for Silver’s hand. He lets him take it, half-reluctant. “I’m more than happy to have you in our home, but not if you’re going to deny yourself everything you so desperately want and, in so doing, cause a black cloud of frustration and jealousy to loom over this house. Either embrace living here and staying with us - for the _real_ reason - or you’ll have to go.”

“You can’t force me to leave, Hamilton,” Silver snorts, grinning at him crookedly. “I could kill you just as soon as look at you.” He leans in close against his own better judgment, smelling soap and woodsmoke on Thomas. His heart pounds in his chest. 

“Don’t make the mistake of underestimating me, John,” Thomas rumbles, mirroring Silver, leaning in so close they’re sharing breath. “We both know what you want. Give in and just be happy, for God’s sake. What’s the point of torturing yourself by staying with us if you don’t—”

And then he stops talking because Silver is kissing him desperately, free hand clutching at the front of his shirt. He’s panting when he pulls back, woozy under the sudden onslaught of thundering lust. 

“Will you come to bed with us tonight? Please?” Thomas asks in a rush, and Silver swallows hard, tasting him on his tongue. He knows that his answer here, now, will change the course of his life yet again. He’s not sure if he’s yet ready to let go of Long John Silver and ease into some kind of peculiar domesticity with these two. 

The next morning, though, when he wakes up with one man’s head resting on his chest and the other’s lips kissing a playfully teasing trail up his right thigh, he knows he’s made the right decision.


End file.
